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Going outside the box to create a classroom experience unlike any other!

Challenge Friday: Microscale

This week we studied the word “scale” and how it’s one of those many words with multiple meanings. We read books about map scales and learned about how scale is used to determine size or distance. This led us to studying the prefix “micro” and how microscale means building a tiny version of something. The kids brainstormed other words that they were familiar with that used the prefix “micro” (such as microscope, microwave, microscopic, microbe, etc).

I informed the kids that their challenge this week was to build something with Legos in microscale. I explained that microscale in Legos is even smaller than normal Lego size. The normal scale for Legos is something built to the size of the minifigures (the little Lego people). Most cars, houses, etc are built to fit the size of the minifigures. This is called minifigure scale. Microscale for Legos would be even smaller than that. I showed them some examples that I had made of the Taj Mahal and the Washington Monument.

We also went to a website called Lego Quest Kids where there are different Lego challenges presented to kids all around the world. We looked through the selections from kids for the Microscale Challenge. Finally we looked through several Lego books, The Lego Play Book and The Lego Ideas Book to get further ideas. After seeing many examples, the kids were bubbling with excitement to try and make something in microscale as well! I gave them the choice to work alone or with a partner. They could make any object or scene that they wanted but they had to try to make it as small as possible.

Kids made models of lighthouses, cities, skyscrapers, farms, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower, and more! Some still made theirs to minifigure scale instead of true Lego microscale, but compared to the real-life versions, it was microscale!